Five Tips For Surviving Summer Thunderstorm Season

April might be a month associated with a surplus of rain, but mine was extraordinarily dry here in New York. Almost all 30 days were filled with straight sunshine, a trend that continued right on toward the end of May. The city, astonished at this surprising streak of luck, began to enjoy some of the benefits of summer early—alfresco meals, jacket-less walks along the Hudson River, sandals!—as their spring trench coats and wellies sat untouched at home.

Then, right around Memorial Day, the dreamy Garden of Eden weather abruptly ended with a series of downpours akin to the monsoon scene from Jumanji (minus the crocodile—aw, man), broken up by bouts of extreme heat. It’s made getting dressed become this mind-bending game of strategy better suited to the scheming characters of Game of Thrones: if I wear the spring trench coat and wellies I bought (but didn’t need) eight weeks ago, I’ll sweat to death; if I don’t, well, I run the risk of getting caught defenseless in a storm. Even looking at my iPhone right now, the forecast says the it may or may not rain over the next four days and temperatures will range between 66 and 81 degrees. Like, what?!

To survive all these schizo summer thunderstorms, I’ve devised a few foolproof methods of staying dry and looking pulled together in the face of both extreme heat and precipitation. Follow my five tips in the slideshow below and you will, too.